ALAMO — While landowners may not be able to stop President Donald Trump’s border wall from being built on their property, they can negotiate the price.

In recent weeks landowners in western Hidalgo County and Starr County received notices that the Justice Department has resumed condemnation cases on their properties for sections of border wall that were planned but never completed under the 2006 Secure Fence Act.

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As the government moves forward with its plan to build 34 miles of border fence and levee wall in the Rio Grande Valley, the Texas Civil Rights Projects is urging landowners to consider their right to a jury trial before accepting the U.S. government’s compensation offer.

“If they disagree with the amount, they have the right to request a jury trial to determine the just amount of compensation,” said Efrén C. Olivares, racial and economic justice director for the legal advocacy organization in this small town in the Rio Grande Valley.

The Texas Civil Rights Project has identified around 300 landowners in Cameron County and Hidalgo county who might be affected by Trump’s wall, and hundreds more across the Texas-Mexico border. The plan is to take as many of those cases to trial as possible, a legal strategy that could tie up the government in court, drive up the cost of land acquisition, and ultimately delay wall construction, Olivares said.

Indeed, a report prepared by the Democratic staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found that of the more than 300 condemnation cases related to past efforts to build a border fence, most of which were filed in 2008, about 90 are still unresolved. And when the government was taken to court it eventually paid out an average of $42,600 per acre to acquire land.

The report also found the wall may cost up to $70 billion, more than three times as much as the Department of Homeland Security estimate of $21.6 billion.

“The administration is also planning to seize private land from my constituents, in exchange for laughably small payments,” said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo. “Texans of all political stripes don't like federal agents taking their property.”

As soon as the new eminent domain litigation beginsm the Texas Civil Rights Project expects to have assembled a team of pro bono attorneys from across the state to represent as many people as possible.

“There is something to be done,” Olivares said. “You can stand up to these guys. They can take the land, but let’s not fold at the first offer.”